Seventeen Going Onto Eighteen
by hana-akira
Summary: He's seventeen going onto eighteen and maybe, just maybe, things will turn out all right for once.


Fandom: Hunter x Hunter  
Title: Seventeen Going Onto Eighteen  
Author: hana-akira AKA rurichi  
Genre: General, Friendship  
Character: Kurapika  
Rating: 17+  
Warning: OOC, doesn't-really-follow-Canon  
Prompt: Beetle-shaped cellphones, Nakama (Friends that are almost like family), Ruitomo (That is, friends with similar interests), and the taste of friendship. Inspired by episode 51 and 62.  
Summary: He's seventeen going onto eighteen and maybe, just maybe, things will turn out all right for once.

A/N: Some things to know before reading this:  
-When Kurapika turns 18, it's right after Gon, Leorio, and he take Killua away from his home. Also, just pretend that when Gon and Killua got their beetle cellphones is before the York Shin Arc, too.

—

It is the day celebrating his birth and Kurapika sees eighteen birthday candles in front of his face on top of an enormous beautifully decorated chocolate cake—his favorite flavor—and watches the flickering flames literally dance before his eyes. His three friends surround him and it is warm like a welcome home.

The room is dark and suddenly he realizes that the blurriness in his eyesight, the dimness of it, is due to the tears that are at the corners of his eyes.

At twelve, Kurapika is an orphan and alone in a pile of dead bodies with no eyes in their eye sockets.

At seventeen, Kurapika is a Professional Hunter.

At eighteen, Kurapika is celebrating his first birthday since the Massacre with friends and is at a fork in the road.

Now, as he blows all the candles out with one breath (With Leorio saying, "Happy Birthday," Gon urging him to make a wish, "Ne, ne, make a wish, Kurapika!" and Killua telling him to hurry up already, "Geez, you're so slow! Hurry up before the wax gets on the cake!"), Kurapika's heart is heavy and his shoulders are stiff and rigid as he leans forward to do so.

And he's scared, so scared that he wants to run because when he looks up again, lifts his sea-green eyes to look around him, he sees the friends who have been with him all along. There's Gon beaming happily at him, Killua grinning boyishly in a teasing manner, and there's a proud smile on Leorio's face. And they're all there, all three of them, for him. And he's scared.

There's a funny feeling in his heart, something he hadn't felt for years now, and it scares him because he's sure he knows _exactly_ what it is. It feels something like warmth, like a warm hug at night, especially so when each one of them gives him their own birthday present that they had personally handpicked and chosen for him. Leorio gives him a fancy, flowery wrapped present that has The Book Thief(1) in it, a book he'd been looking to read for a long while now. Killua hands him a gaudy, smiley-faced wrapped gift and in it is a thin silver-colored bracelet made form titanium. And Gon… Gon places in his hands a cutesy-kitty wrapped gift and what's in it is a beetle-shaped cellphone.

It's in this moment that Kurapika wants to cry.

Because this present, this gift of Gon's can only mean one thing.

_I want you by my side and I want to hear your voice._

It's hard, so hard not to cry in front of Gon, in front of his friends. All of these presents make him want to cry and never stop.

_Don't forget us. We're friends, right?_

There are words, so many words that Kurapika wants to say. _Don't include me. Don't bring me along._ _I'm not worth it. Please don't do this to me. _But the words are stuck to the roof of his mouth and so they never come out. He bows his head, his bangs shadowing his face.

There's a hole in his heart, Kurapika knows. A deep, gaping hole that was gouged open the day the Massacre had happened. Like an empty well which is filled with no water whatsoever, it is dried up and there is nothing except desolation. But ever since he had met Gon, Leorio, and Killua…the well had started to have things poured into it and it was slowly starting to become a spring. Each time they offer to fill up the hole in his heart, he finds it harder and harder to resist the warmth they give to ease the emptiness in his heart away. And if this hole is replaced with their kindness, their compassion, their friendship for him… there won't be any more room left for him to remember his Tribe anymore.

This is why he doesn't want the hole to be filled. He's scared that by filling up the hole in his heart that in doing so, he'll forget. This hole, this gaping bleeding hole in his heart… It's the only bittersweet reminder of the Tribe that has been left behind and he doesn't want to let go of it no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much pain there is to just _breathe_ (Just because you're breathing doesn't mean you're alive, but it's usually a sign that you most likely are.)

He shakes and he trembles because when they look at him with delighted smiles and expectant eyes, Kurapika just wants to tell them to stop.

_Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come from any of this. Look at these cracks. Look at this hole. Do you see this gaping hole in me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore. I don't want to pray for these halcyon days to last forever and ever._

_Because I don't think I can take it if the earth beneath my feet slipped away again and you're suddenly dead._

If this continues on, his heart will eventually be whole again as it once was—in one perfect and intact piece. Unbroken, warmed, happy, beating… and alive. And he'll finally at long last be breathing. (What will happen, though, when they're suddenly gone? What will happen if they die?)

Kurapika doesn't want to know the answers to his questions or to see what will happen when he's finally all filled up again. He doesn't want to. But he's lost and he's not sure at all what to do and why, why did he have to make friends again?

Why did he have to want to live?

He should have died alone with his Tribe, along with his family, his people, but he didn't and he doesn't remember much of how he exactly had survived. (He remembers a crimson bright sunset, bleeding profusely of orange, red, and blood. He remembers the sound of fighting, of people dying, and the hooves of horses stampeding.)

(And he remembers, most of all, of almost being suffocated to death by a dead body on top of him, a body with no eyes, a body whose arms were wrapped tightly around him in a vice grip, a body whose voice had been telling him that it would soon be over.)

(He never did tell that body that it wouldn't be over soon enough.)

There's a fork in the road, two paths that he can go down, and he's not sure at all anymore which one to take. There's one to the right with blood on its ground, the eyes of his Tribe on its sides, and the end of it is nowhere in sight. The one to the left has his three friends waving at him at the end, the sunlight basking them in warmth, and they're all waiting for him and telling him to come with them, beckoning him and calling him as though they're welcoming him home.

In the beginning, there had only been the right path, the path that had bloodstains on its earth. And in the beginning, Kurapika had wanted to take this path because he hadn't wanted to stay still. If he had stayed still, if he did not move, life around him would have moved on, regardless if his world did or not. But now, there was a new path, a path that brought light to his life and Kurapika couldn't help but cling onto it because it brought something to him that he hadn't felt for a long time now: _Hope_.

A path of hope and a path of despair, two paths carved out in front of him, two paths he could take.

His thoughts derail though when Leorio starts to say something again. "Hey, you do know you're supposed to say thank you when someone wishes you a 'Happy Birthday', right?" Expectant and self-satisfied, as though he had just won some sort of prize from a lottery.

"Thank you." Kurapika says as he slowly lifts his head. What do I have to thank you for? He thinks. Maybe it'll be YOU who'll die next time. (Maybe, maybe, maybe.) He doesn't have to choose a path now, not yet, but soon, soon he'll have to. But the path has already been chosen, hasn't it? After all, it's not fair, not fair at all how they're able to wrap him around their fingers, to make him forget his pain even for a little while. It's not _fair_.

"You're thinking too deeply again," Killua says accusingly, and Kurapika says nothing to refute it because it's true (You're always thinking; thinking, thinking, _thinking_ and sometimes even you know that you think too much.) "Then again," he scoffs arrogantly in a fake snobby voice, his nose turned upwards into the air, "More cake for me," and he swiftly swipes a bit of frosting from your piece of cake with one of his finger, triumphant and almost smug with his new prize until Leorio shortly after explodes on him about his greedy, bratty behavior. The silver-haired boy growls in obvious irritation and before Leorio can start in on him again about his other less stellar qualities, he pounces on the tall, dark-haired man, smearing most of the frosting he had previously won onto the man's face. The man splutters, his face reddened with embarrassment and shock, and he _roars_ after he finds out that not only is there frosting on his face, there is frosting on his _tie_ and _sunglasses_. The younger male has a Cheshire cat grin on his face, clearly pleased with his current achievement, and a scuffle is ensued by the two of them.

All the while, Gon is humming contently; swinging his legs back and forth from the table he's sitting on, and eats his cake with Kurapika beside him after Killua had taken some of Kurapika's frosting. The younger boy babbles on about what he and their silver-haired friend had been doing: Going to the Celestial Tower, learning Nen, fighting Hisoka, going back to Whale Island to see his aunt and grandma, finding out about Greed Island…

And suddenly, the dark-haired boy turns toward the blonde male next to him, his eyes intense and Kurapika would have taken a step back if his back hadn't already been leaning on the table.

"I'd like it if all of us can go to the Celestial Tower and to Whale Island together next time. You don't have to decide now, though; we still have time."

His tone is hopeful and although Kurapika wants to say no, to refuse, to turn it down, he can't. The boy continues on, his eyes expectant, innocent in their want. The boy says all of this decisively, but it's blatantly obvious on his face what he wants his friend's answer to be and Kurapika had never been one to disappoint, except, perhaps, to himself. (After all, you swore that you'd make the murderers of your Tribe pay, that you'd make them pay ten times over, but it's been five years now and there's still no change. The only thing different is that now you're starting to become okay.)

"All right," Kurapika agrees and a brilliant smile blooms on Gon's face. There's more that he says, more that he gushes out like how there's going to be an Auction in York Shin and maybe he'll get to see his father in this video game where you can really die in, but it stops abruptly when their two friends butt in—Killua with his ruffled clothes but generally unhurt; Leorio with scratch marks on his face and more than a little roughed up.

Leorio starts first with his 'I'm-the-doctor-you're-the-patient' tone and is surprisingly mature, "Gon, this man you're looking for, your father, is NOT worth all the effort of nearly getting yourself killed. Seriously, he's not. And anyway—"

"—that man is no good. Really, what kind of father is he if he dumps his kid into the hands of his sister-in-law and then doesn't visit or even send letters or any sort of communication whatsoever for twelve whole years?" Killua finishes with a flourish, almost poetic in his manner.

The black-haired boy protests, "But I really want to see my dad."

Both of Leorio's and Killua's expressions are nonplussed and so they each take one of Gon's arms and pull the young, dark-haired child towards them. The child stumbles, accidentally stepping on the dark-haired man's toes and headbutting the silver-haired child's chin, and the scuffle from before resumes again, this time with an additional albeit rather unwilling and reluctant participant.

Kurapika had to smile at the scene before his eyes, had to laugh softly and feel relieved even though he knew he shouldn't have been because he was supposed to be thinking of the Tribe since he was the only one still alive. But the well is being filled, the empty, hollow well and it's being filled with happiness, with tears of joy. This hollow, vacant hole, this deep and bottomless void was starting to get patched up and fixed. He likes feeling a little whole, of feeling _complete_ even though he's supposed to remember, that he's supposed to be alone. They might die, his friends, and it might be his fault, but it doesn't matter as long as none of them died alone.

And as he's dragged into the mess, too, dragged into the mess of limbs that are trying to get one over another, all of it being done in fun, he can't help but forgive himself and slowly start to move on. His wounds were healing; the cracks that had been in his armor for years now, and he could slowly start to let go of the past and no longer be hurt by it. He's seventeen going onto eighteen and maybe, just maybe, with his friends by his side, with their antics and their kindness, their hearts and their thoughts, he'll one day be eighteen going onto eternity.

They laugh, all four of them, their backs on the floor and all out of breath, pleasantly exhausted as their scuffle comes to an end. The atmosphere is light and the feeling Kurapika is feeling is good and it's right and maybe it's a little childish to feel delight from something he doesn't really understand but trusts because it's _home_.

He's scared and he's afraid, but he's not alone, not anymore, and he's okay with not understanding some things because he trusts them. He's not sure at all if the road he has taken is the right one, if the dead of his Tribe will ever forgive him, but this was life and life was never fair. This is where his feet have taken him, where his path now lies. His friends by his side, chocolate cake, beetle-shaped cellphones, jewelry, a book, and a taste called friendship. This is what his life is now. He's come to terms with it.

And somehow, he doesn't regret it, if at all.

—

A/N: So yeah, this was inspired when I saw that the Zaoldyeck Family in episode 62 all have the same type of phone and then I thought of how Leorio, Killua, and Gon have the same type with each other's and that only Kurapika didn't share the same one. Then I thought, "What if Gon gave Kurapika a beetle-shaped cellphone as a gift?" because I think Gon would have done that if only to have something that's similar with Kurapika and to keep in contact with each other (And then Killua would have had bugged the cellphone without Gon or Kurapika knowing just so that he could keep a track of Kurapika and not worry about him so much.) I wasn't sure what to refer to the beetle cellphones as though since in the manga translation it's referred to as the Beatle Version 07 and in the anime translation it's referred to as the Golden Turtle Model 07 so I just referred to them as beetle-shaped cellphones.

As an explanation for the gifts, I thought Gon would be the best in giving the cellphone because he's the most sincere out of the three and so Kurapika wouldn't be as shocked since the reason Gon would be giving it to him would be obvious. Leorio gave him the book since he knows Kurapika is a bookworm (Almost a 'know-it-all') and Killua gave the bracelet as a subtle dig at Kurapika's looks, but also got it in a very expensive material to make up for the teasing.

Below are footnotes, as usual.

(1) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a book. There's also a passage in here that's very similar to one of the passages from this book, but since I changed it a little bit I didn't footnote it. I liked it so that's why I chose it.


End file.
